I can agree with most of what's been said already. I like the first half of the song more than the second. They kind of feel like two different pieces. The song could have ended at 1:47 and been a really good piece. Thanks for submitting and well done!

I really liked this piece. It would go really well in the background of a video game. I loved how the song builds and changes throughout and then resolves at the end. Good melodies, good harmonies, good use of percussion and piano. Well done!

I agree with marisalovesusall. The song has some potential behind it. But it needs a LOT of mixing. Take some time to learn how velocity, modulation, and expression work and use them in your piece. You could also stand to add some more instruments—a bit of percussion, more strings, some woodwinds or brass.

I really liked the piano in this. Well done! However, it felt like the velocity of the piano was the same the whole time, or didn't vary much. You're going to want to to focus on velocity and expression, which will give your sounds a more human feel.

For something you did in 5 minutes, this is good. And if your purpose for the music is a simple background melody for a video game, then it works well. But I agree with cinetic—it lacks direction. It doesn't remind me of anything or inspire me to think of something new.

If you spent some more time on this, used some of the motifs and melodies, and built it into a score, then it could be really good. Thanks for submitting it to the jam!

Thanks guys! I appreciate the comments. Cinetic, how would you recommend combating the mechanical-ness of it? Also, I'm relatively new to orchestral composition, I wrote my first piece in June. What's a normal velocity for a harp? Or do you just mean that it's too soft/loud in some parts and/or covered by the piano in some parts?

I've listened to this about ten times since you uploaded it. Really well done, in every aspect of the score. The melody was carried by more than one instrument, which gave it great variety, and it flowed so nicely. I loved the intro. I learned a lot just by listening to this, which I plan to incorporate into my future compositions. The only things I think you could work on were the transition from the intro (it was a bit jarring) and the end (I felt like it needed more of a resolution rather than a fade out, but that's just my opinion).

Thank you everyone for participating! I hope you all had fun, learned some new things, made some new connections, and are interested in coming back in a few months to do this again!

I also want to congratulate bison warlock (LXP Music on SoundCloud) for placing first with "Wondrous." I think we can all agree that it was the best composition submitted, with several close runners-up.

I had a great time composing something with a specific guidelines and a theme, and I loved listening to all the music you came up with. I'm looking forward to listening to more music you create in the future!

Unfortunately I've spent all day surfing the Pokemon Go subreddit and raging about the game updates so I haven't listened to many of the submissions yet. However, I'll get to them soon.

We're entering the final hours for entries, and I hope we see a few more—I know a few of you still have music to enter, and I can't wait to listen to it. Once submissions close, I'm really looking forward to everyone rating and reviewing each others' music. This is going to be really fun. And if it all goes well, I think we'll be doing another one of these in the near future. Perhaps we can make it a regular thing, once every three months or so.

Great, I think I'll push the deadline to sometime Tuesday. Keep working hard everyone! To anyone who has submitted an entry: feel free to take it down and continue working on it until the new deadline, if you wish.

So far we have four entries, which is great. I'm hoping to see a lot of entries come in tomorrow afternoon/evening. However, I know this has been a really short weekend, and based on what I've heard from some people in PMs, I'm considering extending the submission deadline. Anyone interested in that?

The time has come! We all have three days to compose a single song. I hope you're as excited as I am. I'm so glad this has had such a good response, and I'm really looking forward to listening to what you all create.

When I started this I was hoping that five to ten people would join. We have over thirty people here, and even if only half of us submit material that's still more than I was hoping for to begin with. Get ready to compose some music! This is going to be a lot of fun.

Everyone wants them to enable ratings, but that's the whole reason it was going to be cancelled in the first place. There might be ratings, we'll just have to wait and see what they decide to do. But yeah, if there are no ratings at Ludum Dare, this would be a great place for people to post and rate each others' games.

First, I want to thank you all for joining the jam—I can't wait to listen to all the music we create.

For anyone wanting to follow the optional theme, I thought I'd post a few YouTube links, to get the inspiration flowing. Princess Mononoke is my favorite Miyazaki film, and The Legend of Ashitaka is one of my favorite songs.

Hey thanks man! I'm stoked that even a few people have joined so far. I wasn't sure how this would turn out, but even if a few people end up submitting, I'll be really happy. :) And I can't wait to listen to everyone's Miyazaki inspired music.

Hey, no problem! I've been wanting to do a jam for a long time, so I figured I might as well start one that I'd want to participate in. Good luck! I'm looking forward to listening to what you come up with! Are you planning on following the optional theme?

I've been wanting to do a game jam for a while, where the sole focus is writing a song with specific parameters rather than developing a game—a sort of composition contest, if you will, but specifically for video game music. So I'm hosting a game jam called Composer Jam at the end of this month. If anyone is interested, I'd love to see you there.